Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen.
For it is the fate of a woman Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers Runnng through caverns of darkness.
Gone are the living, but the dead remain, And not neglected; for a hand unseen, Scattering its bounty like a summer rain, Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.
Time rides with the old
At a great pace. As travellers on swift steeds
See the near landscape fly and flow behind them,
While the remoter fields and dim horizons
Go with them, and seem wheeling round to meet them,
So in old age things near us slip away,
And distant things go with us.
The student has his Rome, his Florence, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world and the glories of a modern one.
An enlightened mind is not hoodwinked; it is not shut up in a gloomy prison till it thinks the walls of its dungeon the limits of the universe, and the reach of its own chain the outer verge of intelligence.
Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds that open only to decay.
Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise.
Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth, to some good angel leave the rest; For Time will teach thee soon the truth, there are no birds in last year's nest!
Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon Like a magician extended his golden want o'er the landscape; Trinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together.